Pardoned by Christie on gun charge, N.J. man may land police job

Steffon Losey-Davis, 24, saw his dreams of becoming a police officer vanish after he forgot to remove his legally-owned 9 mm handgun from the glove box of his car and was stopped by police. The armored car driver has since been granted a pardon by Gov. Chris Christie, and is now fielding offers from police departments as far away as Ohio and Colorado - though he has contacted North Brunswick Police about re-applying for a job there, the deptarment's director says.(Credit: Steffon Josey-Davis)

TRENTON — Just a week after Gov. Chris Christie pardoned him from a controversial conviction under New Jersey's tough gun laws, Steffon Josey-Davis is at the top of the list of potential hires at his hometown North Brunswick Police Department, and an Ohio police chief says he should apply to be an officer there, too.

"It feels good," said Josey-Davis said Tuesday. "It's hard to get a second chance in life. It's a blessing."

Out for an evening drive with his fiance on Sept. 20, 2013, Josey-Davis' life unraveled quickly after being stopped by Highland Park police for driving with an expired registration. Because he voluntarily disclosed to the officer who stopped him that he had forgotten to remove his legally owned firearm from the vehicle's glove box, he faced unlawful weapon possession charges under gun laws that require they be stored unloaded in a secure storage case or in the trunk. The plea Josey-Davis took to avoid jail made him a felon and cost him his job at Loomis Armored and his dream of becoming a police officer.

But the Josey-Davis case quickly became a cause celebre for gun rights activists and he asked Gov. Chris Christie for a pardon as the likely Republican presidential candidate was getting bad grades from the National Rifle Association. Christie pardoned Josey-Davis last week, and later blamed state Democrats for enacting such strict gun laws.

In an email, Michael Mier, the chief of police in Copley, a township of 13,000 in northeast Ohio, asked an NJ Advance Media reporter to pass along a message to Josey-Davis.

"Should he decide to relocate out of New Jersey and he decides to come to Ohio, I would like for him to apply to be a police officer in my department," wrote Mier.

Steffon Josey-Davis, dressed in a bullet-proof vest while at work as a driver at Loomis Armored in an undated photo the defendant posted on the online crowd funding website GoFundMe.com. (Credit: GoFundMe.com)

Currently unemployed and living with his family, Josey-Davis said he reached out to the North Brunswick Police Department in the days following his pardon about reapplying.

"I still have a family in New Jersey, and I just don't want to pack up and leave," said Josey-Davis. "New Jersey feels like home."

His fiance is attending Seton Hall studying nursing, and graduates next year. They have been together since seventh grade, and had long imagined a life together in the Garden State, he said. In the meantime, he's also picked up an application for to become a deputy for the Middlesex County Sheriff.

"Anything that's willing to pick me up, I'll take it," he said.

North Brunswick Police Director Ken McCormick previously said Josey-Davis was fourth on the list of potential police officer candidates prior to his legal troubles. On Tuesday, McCormick said Josey-Davis needed only to contact the state Department of Personnel in Trenton to ask to be placed back in consideration for a slot at North Brunswick.

"We have some retirements coming up before the end of the year, in September and October," said McCormick, "... if he re-applies, he'll be No. 1 on the list."

However, a spokesman for the New Jersey Civil Service Commission spokesman, Peter Leyden, said he wasn't sure if Josey-Davis had missed the deadline for appealing his removal from its list of certified candidates due to his felony conviction, which occurred in December 2014.

In the meantime, as stressful as the last two years have been, he said his pardon and high marks on the civil service exam leave him optimistic about his future.

"I always had that one gray hair behind my ear," he said, "but I haven't seen it lately."